Hall sets up commodities hedge fund five months after Duet split

Firm is based in London's West End

Tony Hall has set up Hall Commodities LLP with former colleague Arno Pilz five months after the pair left hedge fund Duet Commodities Fund Ltd.

Hall Commodities, based in London’s West End, the center of the capital’s hedge-fund industry, was incorporated on Dec. 10, according to filings with the U.K. Companies House. Hall and Pilz resigned from Duet in July. The fund started in July 2010, gaining 26 percent in 2011 before losing money in 2012, including nine of the 10 months to June.

The company starts after a year in which most funds lost money and some of the largest closed. The Newedge Commodity Trading Index, which tracks hedge funds, fell 2.5 percent in the 11 months through November after dropping 3.8 percent in 2011. The Standard & Poor’s GSCI Index of 24 raw materials was little changed last year and gained 2.1 percent in 2011 after a 20 percent gain in 2010 and 50 percent a year earlier.

BlueGold Capital Management LLP, the $1 billion energy hedge fund co-founded by Pierre Andurand, liquidated after losing 34 percent in 2011 and Fortress Investment Group LLC shut a $500 million commodities fund after it lost almost 13 percent in four months.

Hall helped set up Duet Commodities in July 2010 after two years as global head of distillates oil trading at the Credit Suisse-Glencore alliance. Before that he was global head of middle distillate oil trading at Deutsche Bank AG between 2006 and 2008. He declined to comment yesterday when reached by phone.

Pilz, who traded metals for UBS AG and Apollo Management LP’s metals fund, was head of metals trading at Duet Commodities, which managed as much as $350 million in March.